


It's not the bullet that kills you but the way it passes through

by imahira



Series: It's not the bullet that kills you but the way it passes through [1]
Category: Rookies - Morita Masanori & Related Fandoms
Genre: (not between the two of them), Brief self harm, Canon - Manga, Consensual Sex For Bad Reasons, Homophobic Language, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Second Person, Past Rape/Non-con, Present Tense, Slurs, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:28:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26865931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imahira/pseuds/imahira
Summary: Hiracchi's not the same when he gets back from his summer trip.It turns out you can know a lot about somebody and still have no idea how to help.
Relationships: Hiratsuka Taira/Imaoka Shinobu
Series: It's not the bullet that kills you but the way it passes through [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1962016
Kudos: 1





	It's not the bullet that kills you but the way it passes through

Hiracchi's not the same when he gets back from his summer trip. He went to the beach with his family, and he's quieter now. And meaner. Everybody notices the quiet but it's just you—you're pretty sure—who notices the mean.

He says something, and you say something, and he just looks at you. Like he'd spit but you're not worth the trouble. He doesn't say much after that. Like you and everybody else are more trouble than you're worth. He's having a bad day, you think, even though Hiracchi's just as loud on his bad days as he is on his good days. He announces it when he's having one, too: "I'm having a bad day, just in case anyone's wondering!" Because he's like that.

He's not better on Tuesday, and he's worse on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday you don't even talk on the way on to school.

You're not used to carrying the conversation, and when you try all you see out of the corner of your eye is a cold look back that's going to stay cold. There's no thawing it with the right words. So Thursday and Friday you don't even try.

Friday coming home from school, you walk awkwardly with him all the way to your house, because he hasn't told you to walk alone yet. Maybe that's coming on Monday. You walk behind him, and he stops at your house, and you watch him go up to the door and then inside without a word. He doesn't even wait for you to open the door. He knows it's always unlocked when you get home.

You follow him up the stairs, trying to walk fast so you don't fall behind. He always takes big steps, but right now it's no fun catching up and you keep slowing down without meaning to.

It's hard to look at him, in your room. You don't have any new movies to watch together. You already read this week's Jump. He shoved it away on Monday when you tried to show him, so he probably doesn't want to see it now.

Sneaking a glance, you can see he's looking at one of the windows. He always says it's fucked up that you have two windows in your room and his just has one. It actually makes perfect sense. His brothers all have to share a room with two windows, and he gets his own room with one. It's balancing things out. You can't tell if he's thinking about that, or actually looking outside.

The room feels cold, like you're in it with a stranger. When he speaks, for the first time since lunch, his voice is even colder.

"Who's home?"

You try to remember whose shoes you saw at the door. "Grandma and Grandpa, I guess. Like usual."

They stay on the first floor, mostly. Their room's down there so they don't have to take the stairs. Hiracchi knows that. The next thing he says makes your skin turn cold too. And then hot, like the inside of your chest.

"Lemme fuck you."

Usually you'd look at him, if he said something like that. You'd tell him how stupid it sounds. He'd get mad and yell a little, then you'd both forget about it. Not right now. The way he says it, it sounds like it could really happen.

You don't look at him, very carefully, as you think and he waits. Waits for you to say _Okay_. You say, "Like—you mean like how g-gay guys do it, with each other?" and he says, "Up your ass, yeah." And you say, "Okay, I guess."

It doesn't seem like anything could actually go inside you there, even while you're taking your pants off so Hiracchi can...

...can put his dick inside you. In there.

You're surprised to see that you have a hard-on. Part of one, at least. Do normal guys get this when another guy says he's gonna fuck them? Maybe that means you're a homo.

You fold your underpants up and put them back in the drawer—they're folded, after all—before remembering you wore them all day. You can kind of feel Hiracchi's getting mad, though, so you'll just take them back out later. You've never wondered whether you're a homo before. You can think about that later too.

His boxers are on the floor. And his pants are on the bed. You don't mind, though. It's a relief. Like the way he usually is. If this makes him feel better you can just get it over with, and he'll be back. Because you've been thinking all week and you don't know what to say.

He wouldn't tell you even if you knew what to ask, and you can't tell what he's thinking anymore. It's always been so easy, you realize, that you never learned how to figure him out when he hides it like other people do.

He pushes you back and around and shoves you, kind of, until you're up on your knees. This is what they call doggy style in porn. You know that much. And you're surprised to find your throat clenching up a little bit.

He doesn't want to look at your face, is what this is. He wasn't looking at your face when he said he was gonna fuck you, and he wasn't looking at your face when he was pushing you away. And now he doesn't even have to avoid it. It's not like you love looking people in the eye or anything, but if you're gonna go to bed with someone it seems like you should do it once or twice.

And this is Hiracchi. You don't mind anything he does.

You swallow that, because there's a hand on your butt and you don't want to think about it anyway. You concentrate on how you have to keep quiet. Normally you'd have to warn Hiracchi to keep quiet and he'd make a lot of noise anyway. And you'd get in trouble, and remind him about how you warned him. But normally none of this would be happening.

You jump a little bit when he puts his fingers inside you. It kind of hurts—but that means it's a good thing he didn't start with his dick. He does that for about ten seconds, feeling around, and there's something around his fingers too. They should be warmer. It's like there's a sock on them or something.

 _Oh._ He knew this was gonna happen. So he brought a glove or a condom or something in his bag. He keeps a couple of condoms around that he bought at the start of high school. The expiration date probably doesn't count for fingers.

He knew you were gonna say yes.

Because you're Imaoka and he's Hiratsuka, and you always say yes.

Maybe you are a fucking homo. Maybe this is how they all get started.

When he takes his fingers out, you hear a ripping sound a few seconds later. That's the condom, you know now. So you wait for him to put his dick inside you.

He puts it inside you, and he grabs your hips, hard, and it goes in even more. You yell a little because it hurts more than you expected. You're wriggling free before you can find out if he'd let go or not, if you asked. Without thinking you say, "Hang on, hang on, I just need—" Your butt is stinging while you rummage in your bedside stand and you come up with something. "I use this." Your face is stinging too. The tops of your cheeks and ears are bright red. "When I'm jerking off, sometimes."

You've talked about jerking off with him before. Of course you've talked about jerking off. Everyone talks about that with their guy friends. You've never blushed like this. It's his fault it's different now, but it'd be weird to be mad at him for that. You probably aren't mad.

Sneaking a glance at him, you see him staring at the lube. Almost like he's getting madder.

"You know, in porn," you start to explain nervously, "sometimes they have to use—and I'm not a porn star, you know? It's not like I've ever had anything—"

"Fine!" he snaps, cutting you off. "Fine."

You don't know what the hell he's so mad about. It's your ass he's hurting. For a second you are mad at him, and then he pulls out another condom and you realize he's just going to keep starting new condoms no matter how many times it takes you two to get through this.

You don't want to be mad at him. You want to make fun of him for wasting all these condoms when he doesn't even need to. It's not like he can get you pregnant. He could've just bought a rubber glove for the first part and not embarrassed himself in front of the store clerk. You want to skip forward half an hour, when he'll be normal again and you can tease him and your heart doesn't hurt anymore. He probably bought the condoms just so he could _brag_ to the clerk.

"Wouldn't wanna make your delicate little butt sore or anything," Hiracchi says as he's putting the lube in you. Another ripping sound and he spits. He probably tried to bite the wrapper open that time.

You're pretty sure that's four, but you'll have to count how many wrappers you see later. That's what you focus on. Not the way his voice sounds.

Maybe he bought them too big. You'll have to check before he can throw all the wrappers away. But it's your room so he might not bother. That's the first thing you'll check when this is over. He's your best friend and there's no way he hates you.

He probably won't clean up. It still hurts when he goes in, but not as much. And even if he does pick all the wrappers up, he'll still have a couple left that he didn't use. You can peek in his bag if you have to. He probably did buy them too big. He's always doing the kind of things people only do in jokes.

Hiracchi doesn't really understand how to do things halfway, so you're pressed right down onto the bed pretty quickly. He keeps pushing and growling and squeezing your shoulders too hard. And your butt still hurts. It doesn't get easier. You can last a few minutes, though.

He'll be back to normal when it's over. Mostly you just have to keep quiet. He's not making too much noise, and he's the real problem. So it's just up to you to keep quiet. And nobody will hear and you can both just forget about it.

Or not. But you'd rather not do this again, if this is how it is when a guy fucks another guy. You just have to keep quiet. You wish Hiracchi would make some noise. You could keep quiet if you knew he was at least having fun.

It still hurts. It doesn't feel good. It feels like something is up your butt and poking your insides around. It's hard and it's not just pushing everything around, it stings against your skin on the inside, everywhere it's rubbing. It's scraping there, and your butt feels like it's splitting where you opened it up for Hiracchi to go inside. Your eyes are stinging too. You have to stay quiet. Your grandparents are home and your best friend is fucking you in your bed.

Your stupid embarrassing sheets feel damp with sweat. Or with something. They slip around under your hands when you try to squeeze them so you can keep lying still and being quiet.

Finally you know if you stay quiet any longer, you're going to yell and they really will hear.

"Hiracchi." Your mouth is dry. You haven't been swallowing. "Please. You're really hurting me."

It hurts again when he pulls out, and then it's a dull ache. You lie there on your front breathing hard, letting the ache get duller and fainter, and you turn to look.

"Fucking useless," Hiracchi says, not looking at you. He's putting his boxers on, the ones he threw on the floor earlier.

"I didn't mean you had to stop all the way." Your voice sounds dangerously close to tears. Maybe he doesn't have a fifth condom, you think, but you don't smile. "Or I could give you a handjob or something."

He pulls his boxers up all the way. Too far, actually. Halfway up his stomach and there's nothing to smile about.

"We can't just stop after all that. You said this was—" No, he never said that— "That this was gonna fix..."

The word hangs in the air, and Hiracchi doesn't turn around.

You are crying now. Just a little bit. Because it hurt and because it didn't work and because you don't want to be crying.

"Would you shut the fuck up?" His foot hits the underside of the bed frame. He kicks like that when he's in a bad mood. Now it's like he's really trying to break it. "You think I didn't cry?!"

The sheets are still cold and sweaty. You hesitate for a second, wiping your nose.

"Hiracchi..." He doesn't look at you. He doesn't reach for his pants. His shoulder blades are standing out taut under his shirt. "What happened?"

"Nothing!" He does turn around now, his eyes cold and furious. And shocked, and offended. Anyone else would've seen the question coming a mile away. " _Nothing_ happened!"

"You're not acting right. You're mad at everything."

"Maybe you're just fucking annoying."

"It was the trip." You keep pressing. You have to talk, because the other way didn't work. Hiracchi's the one who decided to give up on that. He can't get mad at you for talking now. "You were fine before the trip. Did you fight with your parents?"

"Shut up."

"Did someone finally beat you up?"

"Maybe," Hiracchi says, "maybe you'd better worry more about yourself, huh? You're the kind of guy things _happen_ to."

"Nothing happened to me. You're the one acting wrong."

"Guys like me don't _get_ beat up." His fists are balled up, his knuckles white, and he's glaring daggers at you, when you manage to meet his eyes. He might punch you. That's fine, as long as it's after he says what the problem is. "Guys like you are the ones who get beat up."

"Nobody's ever beat me up." (Hiracchi's the one who's come the closest.)

"Guys like you get beat up," he repeats, his voice rising—so much for staying quiet— "because everyone knows not to mess with guys like me, so we don't get beat up, and we _**don't** get raped in the ass!_"

He pounds the mattress so hard with his fist as he speaks that for a few seconds you're not sure what the word was that he said. Then you are sure, and it just seems like it couldn't have happened. Silence rings in your ears for a second or two.

"You weren't raping me," you say finally. Your voice softer than you intended. "You know you weren't."

He scoffs and turns away. He doesn't want to tell you anything else.

At least, he doesn't want to say anything else.

"We can..." You fumble around for something to suggest. It's like somebody attacked him, sort of. "We can just pass the word down to whatever school it was. So the guys in the schools around him can beat him up. Nobody wants someone going around doing... doing that. Or just—I bet the other guys know someone who can teach him a lesson. If you wanna just say he jumped you and beat you up."

They probably can't challenge the guy's school to a baseball game. He might not even be on the team.

"How about you just shut up?" He's staring really hard at your floor.

"Hiracchi..." You don't like reading him like this. You don't want to know these things. But you can tell what he's thinking about, again, and he's making you say it. "If it was a grownup..."

His shoulders jerk and he leans over even further. He's bent nearly in half like a cartoon character, pretending to stare at the carpeting. He doesn't know how to act when something happens like this.

You don't know either. You just know Hiracchi never does exactly the right thing.

"Then," you say. Like you know what to do. "Then you should tell the cops. When girls get—when it happens to girls, they can arrest the guy who did it. With his DNA and everything."

He whirls around and before you can say anything else he has you pinned to the bed. He smells like sweat. Different than usual because it's mixing with the smell of you, inside your room. You're not sure what your room smells like, exactly. This is the closest you can get. Filtered through Hiracchi.

"I'm not a _fucking_ girl," he tells you. "And if you say anything about this you're dead."

"But," you say. He smells like this because he was just having sex with you. And someone else had sex with him, first, and he must've smelled like this then. "'Cause we're juveniles, so they could really get in trouble..."

You've read that fear sweat smells different, though. He must've been scared.

"Listen to me," he says, not listening to you. "There was more than one, and they put stuff in me, and they touched my dick all over, and they made me c-cum a whole bunch, and if you ever tell anyone I will _fucking kill you_."

It never really crosses your mind to say no to him. You only think of it as an option now because he's scared you could. He actually thinks you might tell. Maybe it would be the right thing to do. If what happened hurt him so much that he's scared of you.

He'll be more scared of you if you tell, though. And mad. And he won't talk to you anymore, and this whole long week is never going to end.

"I won't," you say. "I won't tell anybody."

All the movies you've watched are about a guy getting revenge for a girl that _it_ happened to. The girls don't threaten to kill him when he finds out. They don't act anything like this. Maybe it's different with boys.

Hiracchi never acts like other people do, though. Maybe it's just him.

"I'm not a queer or nothing like that." He loosens his grip on your shoulders and you squirm back, moving away on the bed, and he lets you get up on your elbows and look at him.

"They said I was gonna be one but I'm _not_ , it just happened and I couldn't help it."

You nod. It makes sense that could happen, with a guy, if someone else was touching his dick.

"And I would've beat their asses, too, but I thought it was just the one guy, and it turned out his friends were there, so it wasn't even fair. You know? So what was I even supposed to do?"

He pissed someone off, you translate to yourself. Some grownup who turned out to be bad news.

There's a big half-faded bruise poking out of his boxers on the left side. You kept looking at his face before and you didn't see. He pulls his shirt down angrily when he sees you looking, trying hide everything with the tails. He didn't want you to see, either.

You look at his shirt that he never took off, and he cringes back a little. "Didn't your parents...?"

"My arms, a little, but I said I fell." Voice sharp again, he adds, "Do I _look_ like I still get all stripped down for family bath time? I said I fucking fell down and it worked."

You look at him, sitting up a little more now, and he looks at you, in his boxers and and his shirtsleeves over the bruises you don't get to see. He looks at you. Expectantly.

"So?"

"So... what?"

He stares at you, and leans closer, like it'll help. "What do I do?"

"Um, I..." You check over everything you've thought about since you stepped over the threshold of your house this afternoon. Just in case there was something. "I don't know."

Hiracchi looks at you, blank for a second, and then he explodes.

* * *

  
The head of the bed connecting with your forehead actually comes as a relief. Half a second of nothing. Talking to Imaoka is the stupidest thing anybody could possibly do, ever, because he never knows shit. You'd like to be slamming his head against something, but this is easier.

"Hiracchi!" He doesn't actually stop you or anything. Just whisper-shouts at you and doesn't do shit.

"Get out, then," you tell him, raising your voice so the whole house can hear. "Get the fuck _out_ if you can't help!" It's his room and you know he's gonna remind you but he doesn't say anything so you slam your head into the headboard again.

The ringing is kinda nice. You don't have to think about anything but how your head hurts. Amnesia would be cool, but then you might have to start school over again from kindergarten, so you're gonna save that for absolute last. Only if you can't fix this some other way.

Which you should've known wouldn't involve Imaoka, because as you were just thinking, you're pretty sure, he doesn't know shit.

The second time's a little duller, but you know what to expect so you can appreciate it more. Everything feels like it's getting jarred, like you can really feel your brain rattle. It really fucking hurts, but unlike Imaoka you're not a huge baby with dumb baby sheets who starts crying over nothing, so you're fine.

"Hiracchi. Stop it." The tiniest little baby tug at your sleeve. Like that's gonna stop you. "This isn't helping."

"Thought you didn't _know_ ," you tell him. You're a little bit scared of the third time, but you already did it twice so what does it matter?

You've got a nice healthy grip on the headboard now. Good positioning to start the windup. Third pitch, home run swing—or is it three strikes, you're out? Anyway, it can't make things any worse. You humiliated yourself in front of Imaoka of all people and it didn't even help, and Imaoka thinks you need help, thinks _you_ need _help_ , over something that doesn't even matter.

This is fucking nothing, you have total control over your body so it doesn't even matter. Look what you're doing right now, that was three whole times you slammed your head into a big plank of wood and it doesn't matter how it wasn't even supposed to happen, but what were you supposed to do when it was all those grownup men. And you didn't even know somebody else could make you feel good when you don't want it.

But it doesn't matter because it wasn't good. You don't even remember what good feels like, just how it feels like when you have to cum and they're all laughing at your dick hanging out in front of them. And they don't make you keep showing it, but you're too scared to stop. 'Cause you just don't want it to start hurting again. And if they keep laughing they might not hurt you. And the second time you cum they tell you to beg and you do. And it leaves your whole body shaking. And you keep thinking about that time. The time before they got bored with you.

The third time hurt a little. But you were starting to not care anymore, so that was better. That was when they were putting stuff in you. And your dick liked it even though you were getting tired of crying. And they got sick of you when you couldn't cry anymore. And after a while you got sick of lying there, and you walked back to the hotel really slow. And no one really had time to notice your face was scratched up 'cause you didn't act like anything was wrong.

And you haven't cried again until now, with your head hurting and Imaoka's hand on your back all nervous. You really wish Imaoka was dead and in the fucking ground right now, and not touching you, because he's touching you and he knows what happened. And you did all that stupid shit to him.

You wish Imaoka was fucking smart to know when to leave and when to be grossed out because you did _**faggot shit**_ to him and he didn't even like it. And you liked it, when it happened to you. So how come he's the one who gets to ask for it to stop?

"I came three times when they were fucking me," you tell him, as he tries to pat your back. But all you get is a sad little, "Oh..." sound. You'd stop again, if you were fucking him and he made that sound.

So maybe they didn't make you into such a queer.

"I-I wasn't..." Wiping your eyes with his dumb ugly sheets, you try and get the words out. "My dick's really big, right? It's not..." But your throat clogs up again and your whole face feels red. "It's not f-funny?"

* * *

You touch his arm this time. Still awkwardly. "Uh-uh." His lower lip is trembling like this is the most important part of the whole thing. "It's not funny at all. It's normal."

The way he cries—not in your arms, he won't let you that close—is like nothing you've ever seen someone do. Not even Hiracchi. He's screaming for some of it. Most of it. You're pretty sure you never cried like this even when you were a baby.

He lets you put your hand on his back, and you're scared he'll move away if you try anything more, so you leave it there even when it starts to tingle from staying lifted. When he's done, face down in your pillow, he goes to sleep pretty quickly, like he doesn't want to look up at you after all that. You fold up his pants that he never put back on, and you call his mom.

"Hiracchi fell—I mean, your son fell asleep. The oldest one? This is Imaoka. So I think it's better if he just sleeps over. Is that okay? He did his homework."

It's a stupid lie to tell. Hiracchi never does his homework.

His mother sounds a little confused, but she says it's fine. Maybe she's noticed him acting strange. Maybe it's a relief not having him home. Or maybe she thinks spending time with his best friend will help. If she does, she's wrong. You have no idea what to do.

The bigger lie, the part where you're not telling his mother that a bunch of grownup men took him somewhere and did things to him he didn't want—that's not a lie you like. But he really might kill you if you tell this truth.

That's a lie, too. You're more worried about him. You don't know exactly what happens, after something like this happens. You're pretty sure there's a big trial. And the girl—the person it happened to has to answer all kinds of questions. You can't make Hiracchi go through that. Plus he'd start lying, and people get in trouble when they lie to the police. Even if it wasn't something embarrassing he'd be lying. He can't help himself. But with this he'd lie about everything. He might get in more trouble than the men who did it to him.

The rapists.

You can't picture them, when you try to. You try to think of someone to hate, for hurting your best friend, and you can't come up with anything. A bunch of grownups. He couldn't even manage to piss off someone his own age, when everything finally caught up with him.

That night, lying on the floor of your own room, you remember you're not a virgin anymore. It's not because you feel any different inside. It's just that your ass still hurts a little when you roll onto your back. If anything changed you today, it was what happened to Hiracchi. You don't think it helped him any, what you did, but maybe you can at least both be different now. Like grownups.

Or maybe nothing you do will help, and he really does hate you, and everything's going to get worse.

Hiracchi's not good at acting the way he wants to. You think about that right before you fall asleep. He's angry at you and everything else, and he's not good at noticing little things unless you tell him outright. But he knew you'd want to help him, and when you told him it hurt, he stopped. He didn't want to keep hurting you. Not like that.

So even if that's as good as it's going to get, maybe that's okay. Maybe it's enough.


End file.
